Jubilant Maharashtra Congress workers celebrated the INDIA bloc and the party's stellar performance in the state by weighing Nana Patole, the party's state president, in laddoos.
A weighing scale was decorated with yellow and orange marigolds and Nana Patole was made to sit on one of the pans while several boxes of laddoos were put on the other as weights until both were level. Loud cheers thundered through the hall as party workers chanted "vijay aso (be victorious)" in Marathi.
A total of 96 kg of laddoos were used for this.
The Congress-led INDIA bloc - the mega Opposition alliance - stunned the BJP-led NDA in the recently-concluded Lok Sabha polls, restricting the BJP to below the halfway mark and the NDA to below 300. The BJP's poll cry this election was "abki baar, 400 paar".
The Opposition bloc made a comeback of sorts this election in several states earlier dominated by the BJP, including Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra.
In Maharashtra, Congress contested 17 of the 48 seats, which was agreed upon after seat-sharing talks with allies in the state - Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena and Sharad Pawar's NCP. It won 13, up from one in 2019, largely at the BJP's expense.
The party registered mammoth wins in the Vidarbha-Marathwada region. It won all seats in Vidarbha, especially in the tribal belt - Gadchiroli, Chimur, Chandrapur, Bhandara Gondia, and Amravati.
The party believes Rahul Gandhi's Yatras had a major impact on the state. The constituencies on the Yatra route have had a tremendous strike rate in this election, the party said.
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